I Forgot What It's Like to Be Cold

In a strange twist of events, I've forgotten what it's like to be cold. I grew up in Michigan. Midwestern winters are in my blood. But lately my blood's been thinned -- not by moving to warmer climes, but by having good ol' Michigan get downright tepid for a few winters in a row.

This January, the cold returns.

But in bursts. On Tuesday, the thermostat hit 60 degrees. On Thursday, our weekend blizzard began with 30 mph gusts of snow and below zero temps.

And here when I cleaned out the house a few months ago, I looked at those winter hats on the top of my coat rack and wondered if there was any point in keeping so many. After all, I hadn't worn them in two years. Was it really necessary to have a winter hat when you're not expecting to do activities like skiing or sledding?

Yes, yes it is. Or so I realized when digging out my poor frozen car the other week. Thankgod I kept the hats.


About the image: The view of the north pier from the south pier in Saint Joseph, Michigan.Photo taken Jan. 22, 2013. via the US National Weather Service on Facebook.

Real Conversations Between Writers

Jenny: Got any plans?

Me: Tonight, we edit! ... but say it like "At dawn, we ride!"

Jenny: or "Tonight we dine in HELL!"

Me: ...

Jenny: Well maybe that's a bit too much.

The Forgetful Kimchi Hypothesis

Last week, I gathered up some hope from the rubble, and took to heart a suggestion from a magazine that I "send again" by embarking on the final edits of a short story I'd left unfinished for months. It only took me one evening of work to come to the hypothesis that good stories are kimchi.

Kimchi is a spicy Korean food which, while different from sauerkraut in taste, is not so different in production: at its heart, Kimchi is just fermented cabbage. I know, who doesn't see decaying cabbage and think, now there's a metaphor for fiction writing, right? But I hold to my hypothesis: stories are kimchi.

Making kimchi involves chopping and combining raw ingredients including the all important napa cabbage. You combine it with other stuff. Then you wait. You don't touch the kimchi. You don't poke at it or check in on it daily. Traditionally, you put the kimchi in an earthenware jar and bury it in the backyard for months, if not a year, depending on the recipe and the seasonal temperature. The burying is to help provide consistency in temperature, although such jars often are stored above ground in courtyards. Most recipes you'll find on the internet suggest that refrigeration is probably the way to go, yet in Korea "you will still see rows of kimchi jars on top of the flat roofs of apartment buildings in the big cities." [source]

Is my hypothesis that writing is nothing more than a slow fermentation process? That's too simplistic a comparison for what I have in mind.

The drafting of a piece fiction does not need to be slow. The current editing project is a short story I dashed off in an evening because of a looming 8:00 AM workshop deadline. But following that quick trot, gathering ingredients, preparing, chopping, mixing, I received thoughtful feedback, and then I stuck it all in an earthenware jar and buried it in the backyard for about eight months.

The story didn't need months to complete its drafting, but for me to go from the piece's writer to its editor I needed that time. It wasn't about the story, it was about me processing the feedback I'd been given and -- more importantly -- it was about me forgetting the process of writing it.

Forgetting is the most important part. When I take an idea from concept to plot to details to words on a page, I am wrapped up in all of it. I know what I meant to write even if it's not what I actually wrote. At the time of creation, I read what I've written and I anticipate my own next moves. I'm unsurprised. I'm unenthusiastic. I'm too in touch with the process of creation. So I have to take the time to forget everything save the vaguest sense of what the story was about.

Eight months after writing the short story, I hauled the jar back inside and revised. I got more feedback. I was much, much closer to being happy with the story. I'd resolved some of my own craft short comings. I'd figured out which parts of the story were too light, and which too weighty. Then I put it back in an earthenware jar and buried it in the backyard for eighteen months. Eighteen.

This is not to say that I did not write during that year and a half. I just wrote other things. I filled other earthenware jars until my folder of Word Docs looked like a Korean courtyard. And on the eighteenth month when I opened this particular jar, I'd forgotten everything about drafting the piece. Finally I could read it as a reader would, as an editor would. Things which the creator in me thought were "necessary" to describe the world were readily apparent as flotsam to be skimmed off. The story found a new opening place. The first five pages were cut and the information therein condensed into a paragraph. The dispersal of information regarding the character's motivation was restructured. The main speculative element was previously nebulous to the reader -- as the writer I'd understood how it worked just fine -- so its description was reworked, condensed. Would you like some kimchi? It's ready.

I understand writing quickly. I think that deadline driven writing is superb, but then again, deadlines are my main source of inspiration. My advice -- if we must boil this down to advice -- is to write fast and edit slow. Give yourself time to forget so that you can meet your story again as a stranger. Play that game TV couples like to engage in, the let's-put-the-past-behind-us-and-pretend-this-is-the-first-time-we-ever-met game. You know the one, where they smile bittersweet smiles at each other and attempt to pick each other up for the first time in spite of their insider information.

Of course, no advice should be treated as sacrosanct. All writers write differently. Yet I am always astounded by those who begin rewriting a piece almost as soon as they've drafted it, those who can go from workshop to second draft within a week, if not a day. Not astounded because they're "doing it wrong" but that they're able to do so all. My memory is by no means a steel trap, but it needs a stretch of time before it can forget a story well enough to allow me to read it afresh, read it like a reader and not like its creator.

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More thoughts from other people: "Do You Practice Creative Contemplation?" an interesting essay on patience and listening, and while it poo-poos on NaNoWriMo, the mother of all deadlines, I believe that a NaNoWriMo draft, taken with a kimchi recipe approach, is potentially quite serviceable, so I'll cut the essayist a break.

Pick Yourself Up and Start Again

This essay (article, post, whatever you may call it) is going to be about writer's hope, direction, perhaps even the implementation of  some self-discipline. It's about embarking on a new project -- or more precisely, embarking on the finishing of a project, the project itself isn't exactly new just the stirring desire to finish -- with positive, patient persistence. (For hopefulness about writing, read on...)

How I'm going to convey that feeling isn't something I've planned out. Perhaps this is indicative of the fact that I've not much planned my project -- all I have is a feeling to spur me on. But I try to think of these posts as short essays (blog posts are always better when they draw some sort of conclusion that echos the opening, no?), and as I try to implore my writing students, essays are nothing more lofty than an attempt to communicate your personal thinking on some subject, the term "essay" coming from the French essayer (v), to try. Or essai (n) a try.

An essay is an attempt at expression. It may meander, it may be cut and edited, but it shouldn't be overly rigid in construction and planning, otherwise how can you make great discoveries of self and thought while you essay? Save your structure and fact and organization for editing, well after you've essayed your way to some truths.

And so I am trying.

At this precise moment, I'm trying to stay positive, not sick to my stomach as I watch the pest control guy spray just part of the nearby apartment building. Just part? I understand how that's cost effective, but not how that's get-rid-of-the-pest effective. Ug. Another great reason to keep cats: they find the pests before you do and, usually, eat it before you're the wiser.

But the man with a can of pressurized chemical spray isn't the only thing which should be dragging on my sense of direction and hope, yet isn't. For starters, the Attack of the Back has devastated my past week.

The non-compliance of my body to respond to my commands in a useful manner meant that on this past Saturday it took me twenty minutes to go from reclining to standing, unassisted. And then once I was standing it was less than twenty minutes before Attack of the Back protested so loudly that I was forced back into the previous, reclined posture. I am currently on the mend. Mend-ish. I may actually have to give in and go see a chiropractor. You know, get over that aversion/advice I was previously given that once you start going to a chiropractor you can't ever stop. Because hey, isn't that also true for dentists? And because hey, these Attacks of the Back are painful and they don't look like they're ever gonna stop coming to visit me either.

So I'm upright again. Sorta. I had big 2013 dreams of punching out a lot of words starting on January 1 and not stopping until ... okay, just not stopping. But the reality is that the punching out hasn't started. Half-way through the month and I'm still working to get my feet under me (figuratively) from the whirlwind end of 2012 and (literally) from the Attack of the Back. Newyness aside, there's no reason that my self-discipline and goals have to be pegged to calendar start and end points. So sally forth! I say. And tallyho! Cowabunga! And other similar cries which indicate a rush of activity!

No, no, that's not what I want.

If there's one thing I've learned about myself, it's that I am prone to manic writing. Followed by furloughs of no writing. Some of which is deadline driven -- oh baby, there ain't nothing like the sound of a deadline whooshing past to get me on task! -- but some of it is an intensity issue. Frenzied activity in general is easy  to get on board with. It's Day One of the exercise routine/diet where you're super good, followed by week two when you can't even remember that you're on a routine/diet because you just can't take the super good intensity anymore. You're like, dude, chill out with this craziness and get me a cupcake. I need moderation and discipline. Not a celery stick and ice cream pendulum. Not the frenzy that follows the cry of tallyho, but the deliberate fox-stalking which precedes it.

Instead, a gentle push to get me started:

Today I received a lovely, personal letter from a magazine which I respect telling me that my story was well written and interesting, and then telling me all the reasons why it wasn't going to be published by them. What a great big happy-sad feeling that produces. I adore the fact that they took the time to talk to me about the story. I'm pleased with their compliments. But I'm sad to have failed in the endeavor of getting them to publish the story.

"Bittersweet" doesn't really begin to describe the conflicting emotions this particular letter invokes. "Bittersweet" describes previous such letters I've received -- letters which I usually don't blog about because I don't usually feel the desire to make such things public. This time I'm far too happy and far too sad, simultaneously, to reconcile the two into any nameable emotion.

It is however a spur. A gentle push to get me started. Along with all the things the letter said, I take away this: they're eager to see what I send them next. So on to the next. A brilliant nudge to get me to complete edits on a short story I've let languish for eighteen months. And get it done now. Using the short goal to achieve a sense of action and purpose, to garner momentum, enough to pick myself up and start again.

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Note: I couldn't find a way to work it into the above essay, though I did try, but I wanted to point out another lovely post on writer's hope, direction, and discipline that I read today. Rebecca Enzor's "Give Them a Chance to Say Yes" inspired by a beautiful tweet by Amalia Dillin. Her direction is more focused on submissions than creation, but still terribly hopeful. Autumn MacArthur's blog is also great for these sort of inner-looking hopeful-writer-rants which I love.
Top photo credit: "by Stik" By Feral78 via Flickr.

Good morning!

I feel a great need to have this happy message emblazoned on my coffee machine, so that every morning as I stumble blurry-eyed to meet it, it can be happy to greet me.

Odyssey Writing Workshop Application Time

It's that time of year again! Odyssey Writing Workshop (which I continue to highly recommend) is accepting applications for the summer 2013 workshop session. They take only 16 students per summer for a six week, five-day-a-week workshop, lecture, and writing experience that's unlike any other. I'm both an Odyssey graduate and an MFA grad; and in many ways, Odyssey was a more useful experience in regard to my writing -- it was definitely more personalized, more intense, more ripe for having personal breakthroughs, and understanding my genre.

This year there's even some full and partial scholarships to be scored for the program.

Odyssey 2013 announcement:

Make a quantum leap in your writing this summer! The Odyssey Writing Workshop for fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers will run from June 10 to July 19 in Manchester, NH. Participate in the program that has led 58% of graduates to professional publication, with their work appearing in top magazines and published by major publishing houses. Challenge yourself and pack two years of learning into six weeks of intense work. Four-hour classes five days a week, an advanced curriculum, daily writing and critiquing assignments, weekly stories/chapters due, in-depth feedback on your work, personal guidance from Jeanne Cavelos, former senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell and winner of the World Fantasy Award, and guests Nancy Holder, Holly Black, Adam-Troy Castro, Jack Ketchum, Patricia Bray, and Sheila Williams. The early action application deadline is January 31, and regular application deadline is April 8. Four scholarships and one work/study position are available. Read more here: http://www.sff.net/odyssey/workshop.html

Newyness

I've got this theory. It's not about resolutions, or the tradition of breaking them. It's not about the slew of weight loss commercials on TV or all the fliers for gym memberships showing up in my mail. It's not even about our adherence to planetary rotation cycles which dictate we buy new calendars every December and hang them on our walls every January -- not directly at least. It's about the newyness.

New-y-ness. Better known as the shiny-new-toy syndrome. The great desire to take the gadget out of the box and play play play with it. Tell all our friends about it. Use it to improve our lives because we just spent ... well, actually we don't want to talk about how much we spent on it. Newyness.

Whether you make resolutions on January 1, or shun the practice, it's impossible not to stare into the dark of night after the ball's dropped and drunken people are singing and kissing and you absolutely can't take another moment of Ryan Seacrest pretending to be as cool as Dick Clark -- and as you stare into the sky you can't help but think this year will be better.

There's no box, no bag, no forgotten assembly instructions for this shiny-new-toy, but we feel it, feel it deep in our bones: this is something new. Something we should treat with great respect. Something we want to plan for and talk about. Something we want to use to improve our lives. And so we make resolutions. Even if they're not aloud. Even if we put them on the shelf and forget about them after the shiny-new has worn off. We can't help it. Newyness is born of a combination of curiosity and propensity to dream. Which makes it -- if I dare to go there -- part of the human condition.

It's comforting to know that as I make detailed goal lists for 2013 wherein I plot to lose x pounds and write x words, to return to handwriting the morning pages a la The Artist's Way which saved my sanity previously, and do a major house cleaning at the start of each month (although this last item may be more a healthy/sanitary concern than a case of newyness), that I am participating in a very human activity. Not a lost cause or an optimist's pipe dream, but by my means of celebrating this exordium I am affirming my humanity.

Whereas that nap I was contemplating this evening would have affirmed my cathood. Good thing I resisted.